The Remaking of A Goddess
by Eightcrayondon
Summary: This story is set during Storm's trip to Africa, right after she loses her powers. In this story, Storm decides to seek out her heritage as a Soceress. Chapter 5 is up! Complete! I've ammended chapter 5, it wasn't clear that it was the end so I fixed.
1. Chapter 1

It was more of a home to me than any I've known, but now my perceptions are so muddled that I barely recognize it. As a goddess I saw it's beautiful, bittersweet aura and now it's like looking through stained glass.

I do everything right to call upon my winds but they're deaf to my summons. It's as though the elements are ethereal or abstract. The very wind is beyond my reach.

I am of no use as leader of the X-men without my powers. Scott cannot lead with wife and child and there is no willing or ready member of the team.

I've returned to my village to stake claim to the other facet of my heritage. My family tree branches back dozens of centuries and while my forefathers were monarchs my mothers were high priestesses and magicians. My lineage affords me latent arcane abilities and a capacity towards much more. However, I never thought that I would need to develop them.

There isn't a temple in the village, only the home of the crooked old wise woman who serves as cleric. During my tenure as goddess this same woman came to me on behalf of her people in supplication. The irony doesn't escape me; now I come to her to be taught.

I was much younger when my foster mother, Ainet, taught me the spiritual canons that afforded me oneness with the planet and the ability to enter a trance that allows me to hold court with the bright lady. While these practices do not qualify as magic the techniques parallel.

She's sitting in front of her hut on a wooden crate, leaning forward. Her hair is as white as my own and while in this village her clothes are fine, by western standards she's beyond impoverished.

"Mother Shanti," I say, looking at her weary, voided body.

She raises her head slowly and I wonder if she's sedated. She moves as though she's aged thirty years since I've last seen her.

"Ah, hello Windrider," her smile is forced.

_What has bore the life from you, woman?_ I wonder, kneeling to look into her eyes. There are clumps of thick pus-like matter in the corners of her eyes and her face is caked in mud.

"Why are you out here like this Mother Shanti?"

"I am waiting for you Ororo; I knew you were coming to claim your birthright; the final piece of who you are."

"Are you ill, Shanti?" I ask, reaching for her small, calloused hand.

"I'm not ill," she says, moving her hand away evasively. "We haven't much time child."

She stands, turning to her hut. Her coat is actually a faded green robe with faint red stripes running down the back.

_What has happened to you Shanti, when I left you last you were regal and the life just hummed around you. Before, age suited you and gave to your beauty, now you're merely a shell of the woman I remember_.

Her hut is exactly as I remember it; on the inside it's the size of a small American ranch. There isn't much by the way of décor other than a small shrine to the Goddess Oya. Oya was a storm goddess, and the people of this village believe me to be her reincarnated as the Maiden.

The village still sees me as a goddess and I feel embarrassed; returning as plain folk, with none of the grandeur that I am known for.

No livestock will be butchered in my name to wet the lands.

"I remember when you left us Windrider, when you told me that you were no idol and that this Xavier would teach you about the real world. You trusted him so much and knew that his path would be a part of your own journey," Shanti tells me, searching through her large crate that serves as a chest for her tools in magic.

"Now you've returned to me, war torn, seeking the fruition of your lineage," She turns to look into my eyes. "Ororo, I'll be leaving the village and I've waited for you for months; knowing that I'm the only one that can grant your hearts desire, and I'm scared girl, because the ceremony required is dangerous."

"How so?"

"You're link to your lineage has been severed and I must align you with your mothers; if you don't **_know_** them then your powers are anchorless. You're potential in the black arts is limitless, and without the strength that you're foremothers would afford you," She hesitates, not looking at me at all, "You'll go mad and become one of the most destructive beings this world has ever known."

I remember a beautiful redhead, the most gentle and pure creature I've ever known and I remember what she became. I loved her more than any sister that I could conceive of and I couldn't save her from herself. I watched with my friends as she destroyed a whole solar system and a world of five billion innocents.

"How dangerous is the ceremony?"

"Deadly."

"I haven't any other choice."


	2. Chapter 2

I lie on the floor of her hut, parallel with her alter, while she anoints me with oils and hushed psalms of protection. It was necessary for me to fast for three days before the ceremony, to cleanse my body of any spiritual impurities.

Her hair is plaited away from her face and she looks refreshed in comparison to my impression of her after our reintroduction. The candlelight reflects in the pale brown of her eyes, accenting flecks of gold.

She touches my forehead with her left hand and the center of my chest with her right as her voice raises in magniloquent crescendos. Her magic is tangible; I can feel its vibration on my skin.

It's sudden, the retching spasms that course through my whole body, followed by pain so involved that I can't focus enough to scream. I only manage grunting exhalations. I can't see and Shanti's chanting has evolved into an indiscernible noise; it sounds like someone is playing notes on crystal glasses.

Where my senses were blurred, they have regressed to nothingness. It's as if I'm no longer on the floor or in pain. All that I have are my thoughts that have miraculously synced up.

I strain with my eyes, begging for the blurred vision, and I reach with my ears to hear Shanti's voice. My strength of will is all that I have and it fails me as it did when I called my winds.

Vision comes to me in stills, flashing one by one; stills of women with my ashen hair and blue eyes. The last still is of a middle aged woman, holding a staff, wearing a long blue robe and headdress.

I feel my soul aligning with her own.

I am Uwimana, my brother is king of our people and I am their priestess as my aunt and the aunts before her were clerics. Every king of our village had a daughter that takes the reigns as our spiritual leader and as lineage demands, each generation produces a sorceress much stronger than she who preceded.

My brother's wife has given him no girl child, only hoards of arrogant men, so through the writ of tradition my own powers will increase ten fold on the eve of my fortieth summer.

_Bright lady, What will I become? _I wonder, crouching down in the plains that surround my beautiful village. I dig a shallow hole in the rich earth with my hands and drop an amulet in the earth, covering it with dirt.

I close my eyes and focus my will into the amulet, I feel my magic spread across the breadth of our land.

_This summer will be bountiful_.

My hut is as affluent as my brothers; he expects no superior treatment. While they come to him with disputes, they come to me with their entreaties for the Bright Lady.

"Uwimana," Azizi says, entering my hut in his rich purple garb and headdress.

Azizi is my brothers head advisor, we've known him since we were small children and I have loved him all of my life and he has loved me. My brother, Malik, is blind to our affair; tradition demands the pureness of it's priestess.

Malik will murder Azizi if he finds me pregnant and this concern is only doubled by my fear of the consequences that an increase in power will bear on my daughter.

"Hello, love." I embrace him, squeezing him tightly. He pulls away, touching my stomach tentatively.

"How long, Uwimana?"

"She will come in the middle of the summer."

"I hope only to see her face before …" he trails off, not mentioning his fate.

"We will find a way, Azizi. I am a servant of the Bright Lady and as my consort she protects you as well." I embrace him again, lightly this time, holding my head to his chest. His heartbeat is steady and comforting.

It's still dark when he leaves my hut, kissing my now portly stomach through the sheer cotton robe and speaking in hushed tones to our daughter.

It is my maid who betrays us, the day before my increase, a woman who loves me more than herself. Despite all of her devotion to me, she is devout to the Bright Lady and the canons of this village.

When Azizi and I are called before our king, she greets us with her accusations, I feel betrayed by Azizi most of all by his confession. He tells my brother, who has chained him, that he goaded me with wines and seduced me with his superior wiles. He begs for death as payment for his sins, to cleanse the worship of our tribe.

"This will remain quiet, but you will be executed under the banner of treason. When your bastard child is born it will be drowned in the river and burnt." Malik says, addressing only Azizi, not daring to make eye contact with me.

"You wouldn't dare!" I say, approaching him, only to be blocked by his footmen. "Harm, either Azizi or continue with plans of harming my child and I will see the full wraith of the Goddess rain down on your head! I will reverse all that I have done for _your _people!"

"Uwimana, you have sealed his fate as well as the fate of your child through your own moral depravity! The customs of our people, not my own, demand these measures if you could forbear your station then you too would meet the executioner tomorrow!"

They make me watch his execution from my cell.

The villagers loved Azizi, yet today they quake with anticipation of his slaying, all compassion dies when the arrow meets his chest. His death isn't instant and through my own divine empathy I feel the culmination of the sorrow of never meeting his daughter.

Without plan I fall to my knees, touching the black earth beneath me, my powers flower out of me, too large to be contained by my body. My intentions are clear now that my love will never taste the fruit of this land.

"I take it back," I begin to chant. "I take it back."

I repeat these words in tandem, with increasing speed and pitch, and I watch as the land withers and all of the magic done is undone.


	3. Chapter 3

I have received my bounty.

My brother is no tyrant; he is a good man and wonderful father, I have witnessed him wailing with authentic grief with the passing of his youngest son. If my own life were on the line, I am fully confident that he would throw down his own in substitution.

My intent is not to weigh his virtues.

They crowd the door of my cell, my brother and a small legion of his bodyguards, bustling with plans for my execution. Their excitement is coupled with fear and anger, my actions have destroyed the tribe's land. I have made it a small fruitless desert.

Malik is of course at the helm, he doesn't bother with questions of my motives or the obvious recriminations, he merely orders his men to cut me down.

Their wills are weak and it doesn't take much effort to impress my objective as their own; they slay Malik viciously and my only regret is that in my enthusiasm, his pain wasn't lasting.

I feel myself disassociate.

Rain leaks into the hut, partially, and I can feel lightning pound against the earth and a negligible shock wave from the whip of thunder in the sky.

"Do you see the risks?" She asks, gathering her hands into her lap.

I don't answer her.

"Your magic is much more powerful than that of those before you. I fear its true scope."

"So do I," I say, feeling it teem within me and I know that no other human being has ever felt this way. I fear that only the Bright Lady could possibly identify.

"Goodbye, Shanti." I say, and for her, my teleportation is as if I'm pixels that disappear one by one.

"Are you saying that her power is comparable to the Phoenix?" Scott asks.

They don't think that I can hear them.

"No Scott," Charles says, considering his words. "What I'm saying is that the power of the Phoenix isn't comparable to Ororo."

I can practically sense the change in the dynamic of his heartbeat.

"What do we do?" he asks, his fear is for me; the pain he felt when we lost Jean was more complete than my own and the emotional wounds haven't healed for any among our ranks.

"Nothing," Charles says, I can't tell where he's moved but I can sense that his position has shifted.

"Nothing?"

"Ororo and Jean are very different Scott; since the inception of her mutant powers Storm has worked to keep almost complete control over her emotions. In effect she has fostered a strength of will second to no one.

"While there are risks, I don't see her posing any immediate threat."

"The way that you anticipated the threat with Jean?"

As good as any time to interject.

"Scott, my plans aren't to realize any seamless potential." I say, holding his hand in my own. "I have played the role of Goddess and while in youth I desired the wherewithal to answer all prayers and promote peace. I no longer care to parent the world."

"I couldn't go through it again, Ororo." Tears slip down his cheeks, unaffected by the irresistible force of his optic blast. "The X-men are my family, I don't have anyone else."

"You forget Madelyne, Scott. You forget the child that she bears." I say, moving in to hug him. "Leave them in my charge, I will take care of our family."

Through the use of magic I have regained my elemental powers and introduced a measure of invulnerability and strength. I fear that these additions will prove me greedy, but my intent is only to be the leader that the X-men need.

Scott's concerns have capped much of my use of magic, I do not wish to become the X-men's second Phoenix.

It seems, however, that we do have it's second coming.

Rachael Summers came to the X-men a hard version of her mother, with the same fire red hair, slightly tom-boyish , she is nonetheless every bit of what her mother was visually. When it comes to personality, I've never known Scott or Jean to ever be so angry.

She was wounded severely by Wolverine, merely weeks before, to prevent her attack on Selene, the Black Queen of the Hellfire Club. I did not question his motives, because he made a necessary decision; the X-men are not executioners and that was Rachael's role in her attacking the Black Queen. While the team was borne of the ideal of not killing, we have all been forced to chose between our survival or the survival of another.

While healing her, I was tempted to scale down her powers.

I decided that that would be a step in a direction that I was not willingto take. To alter another person, would be a practice incontrol that ultimately destroyed my forbearer. And while I was her, I loved the revenge rested upon Malik, it is now evident that it was the correlation of grief and power.

While power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely.

It's beautifully executed and if it were the X-men proving themselves capable of such teamwork I would beam with pride. Alas, my admiration is due to the Marauders; Scrambler, Riptide and Vertigo.

With one touch, Scramblers powers open the floodgates of Phoenix's telepathy, throwing her to her knees at the mercy of the empathic pain of the falling Morlocks. Insecond front, Vertigo unleashes her powers to ensure that Rachael remains on her knees and Riptide finishes with a barrage of flying shrapnel that are flung with the speeds of hurricane force winds.

I doubt that she even realizes that she is dead.

Funny, my relationship with her was nothing in comparison to the teammates that have fallen before.

Still, this is what leaves me broken.

I scream, it's shrill and I feel my powers overflowing, reeling to get out, much larger than myself.

All it takes is the desire and will to make it happen and the Marauders are gone, snuffed out of existence. The bodies of the Morlocks make it evident that they did exist, but through my magic I took them away. They are neither in Heaven or Hell, they are gone and not one atom of them remains on any plain of reality.


	4. Chapter 4

The magic has changed me; it has been three months since I have become a sorceress and I remember that the power was quaking; I could feel it pulsate as if it had a heartbeat of it's own. It now seems that I have evolved, I no longer feel new in the power and using it has become effortless. Before, my weather powers were a physical extension of who I am; using them were taxing in correlation to the task.

The power doesn't seem like any magic I've ever witnessed. It's as though the magic is in the urging that my will be done, no incantations, amulets or recipes; all that is important is willing it into fruition.

Is it nirvana, that everything is so simple and clear, that I hold this limp, red head in my arms and know that her death isn't so bad? I know that she has achieved grace beyond mortal toil and she's been granted a gift for the culmination of all the good she's done and her past evils no longer matter.

This is where I would invoke the Bright Lady for answers, but I am no longer sure that she understands things better than I.

I turn to my teammates; they stare at me in fear and shock, unable to even grieve for Rachael Summers. They fear that I have become something horrible or that they face another marred teammate.

I cannot convince them otherwise and I will not try.

"We need to find any surviving Morlocks and return with them to the mansion. Wolverine, Rogue and Colossus I need you to scout these tunnels for other Marauders, I want them captured, however, if it's your life or theirs, I would prefer you take theirs."

At the mansion, Kitty speaks to Magick, telling her of the change in me. I am in the War Room, but I can both see and hear them.

"They were just gone, Illyana. Like she ripped them from the face of the planet."

"She erased them Kitty," Illyana explains, sitting down, resting her opened hand on her face, covering her mouth and nose. "She just made them gone. I can't say it any better than that, there's no matter or thought or anything left of them."

"How could she do that?"

"I don't know for sure, however, in magic there's a such thing as lineage," Illyana says, looking to the floor, considering her answer. "It's inheriting some measure of your ancestors' magical ability in addition to your own. Now, in the case of Storm, her family tree branches back beyond true civilization and for almost as long, her people were witches.

"For her people magic was religion and they were actually priestesses," Illyana hesitates, and I notice thather eyes slightly widen. "I think that Storm has become some sort of … omnipresence, a goddess."

"Goddess?" Kurt asks,I can sense the expletives hum around the room in the minds of my teammates.

They haven't invited me to thier meeting of minds, convening in the library.

"What kind of Goddess?" Scott asks, returned with his team of original, but spin-off X-men. I feel a warm flush at the sight of Jean Grey.

Illyana looks harried.

"In pantheon mythology, there are tiers of goddesses; demigods, which we know Storm isn't. Then there are the mothers, maidens and crones. However, in some rare cases there is a triple goddess, now without boring you, a triple goddess is the equivalent of the Christian god … in power. She would be the Goddess … proper noun."

The room is hushed and even I am speechless.

It rushes through me, this incoherent, frameless, melee of apprehension.

When I was very young I accepted the mantle of Goddess; I was happy to help my village and I bore the burden of being prayed to, hated by some for being unable to help when they needed it. Hearing prayers that I couldn't possibly answer, having the dying beg me to save them.

Now I can save everyone.

The apprehensions melt away, replaced with my plans for a Utopia of my own design; an almost fairytale way of living.

"You're smarter than that Ororo."

The sound of her voice fosters a jubilant swell through the breadth of my body and I feel heady, almost drunk as I was before with Forge.

"Hello Jean!" It's a hushed exclamation, andI squeeze her as tightly as I can, trying to make up for the lost embraces.

I don't believe that I could love a sister more.

Her embrace is much lighter, she touches the back of my head, lacing her fingers through my hair.

Explanations of resurrection are not made or asked, I am only grateful for her revivification.

"Storm," Jean says, tentatively pulling away. "I know you're plan. I have to say that I thought better of you, I thought that you had learned not to disturb the natural pace of things, in Africa you gave your people weeks of rain and in turn you harmed the surrounding people."

"But now I can make the rules," I say, my insides begging for approval. "Now, it can rain everywhere, the skies will never be dry for anyone who needs me. I can answer every prayer affirmatively."

"Storm! There are reasons for everything and you can't change the world to your liking because you think that things would be better your way! You're drunk by this power and I won't let you become me!" She screams.

"Have you lost your mind?" I ask, my insides trembling. "You are a child to me Jean, I love you, but I will not have you condescend me!"

It's too late for retractions, but worst of all, she offers none.

"Do you see yourself Storm?" She says; her voice doesn't lose any of it's outrage and she steps forward.

I find this challenging.

"You haven't what it takes to challenge me, but I will give what it takesback to you!"

It doesn't take the intense look that I offer.

I can see the fire cresting within her, the bird reborn.

Phoenix.


	5. Chapter 5

She's looming and her aura is magnificent. She is so alive in her power and I am experiencing the sensations with her. I am inebriated by the tangible passions of the Phoenix and within this telemetry a desire, beyond anger or rage, grows to consume her to enrage her unto the complete flowering of her powers.

The bird manifestation is harrowing, majestic, her wings spread their full span and her words echo; the final syllable following the first word as if it were an anticipated second.

The winds rage about me in a tight orb and I weave lightning through the circling dirt and debris. The wind moves at speeds that make the dry dirt like a sand paper that would skin Colossus, fully armored.

Her tone is reasoning and beautiful, as she wracks against the anger I have infused within her, the words are lost on me following the onslaught of immeasurable passion.

The mansion was destroyed by her knee-jerk reaction to the sudden influx of power. The X-men have survived the Phoenix's cresting, miraculously, and I'm taken aback by their expressions of awe.

I remember when we fought Phoenix; we were consumed with plans of strategy and survival. Now they look as helpless as babes.

"Aren't you here to help me X-men?" I ask, freeing myself from my barrier; the air is still and I needn't any winds to stay aloft.

"Aren't you here to show me a better way?"

"We weren't aware that you needed any help!" Kitty screams, defiantly, tears threatening to escape her lids. Her anger is almost sobering and I notice her body fighting a flood of sobs, intent upon staying angry with me.

"You've always been untouchable Storm," she continues. "Help? You're a goddess now! I've never seen you ask anyone help!"

It's almost automatic, how I reassert myself, her pain becomes immediately negligible and I recognized the task at hand.

"I am going to attack you, Jean," I say, turning away from my teammates. "You'll need to protect yourself as best you can, have no allusions, I will take you're life."

Her tone is pleading, but indiscernible through the roar of my intent.

I rush toward her as quickly as I can, naked without my shield. I crash against the fires of her shield and feel nothing, I wonder if she is as numb to my touch.

Her claw is white hot and she holds me in it, trying to restrain me and I don't know where I pull the wherewithal to break her grip, briefly destroying that part of her. I learn now that the bird manifestation isn't a shield but a living, feeling extension of her, her scream is wildly comforting.

I have taken full measure of her capabilities and stop holding back.

I concentrate on the belly of the bird and watch as I cause it to slowly fizzle away, her screams are deafening but I doubt that the pain is comparable to the pain I felt during the ancestral regression.

I increase the depth of my intent and although her pain has increased her screams cannot become any more pained or express added agony.

She has reached the zenith of expression.

I haven't time to consider the finely concentrated optic blast that would flatten a mountain. I am beyond the physical now, while I am still palpable I believe that I am beyond the pain that humans could incur.

The bird is gone; Jean lay on the scorched knoll, alive but lifeless, twitching from the residual.

I could have removed the Phoenix force as easily as I gave it to her, but the pain of a being with power almost as boundless as my own gave me life; expelling the numbness and in it's place, jubilance.

When I land I hear the heavy breathing of Wolverine, racing toward me. I keep my back to him, inviting him to stab me with his claws, wondering what will happen.

The unbreakable breaks and he howls in pain, forgetting himself.

Instinct would have me repair his wrist, but I decide to leave the task to his mutation.

No one else attacks me; they merely allow me to walk away.

It is disconcerting that I no longer have a place among the X-men, the only true family I've know in my adult life. The memory of my mother and father is so clear in my mind, yet I have no rational love of them, merely the memory of a child's limitless affections.

And while for the most part I would give the moon to get to know them in an adult fashion, a large part of me fears the reality of who they are. I only know my parents through the abstract and I'm afraid that once the pieces of them sync up, or the pieces of me, all of the love that I harbor for them will prove itself a fraud. It's a terrifying prospect that what I found so perfect will petrify and my idolization with fester, killing the only humanity I have left.

They arrive in a hoard, and I know them without meeting many of them: Some are many of the most powerful magicians ever to bow onto this planet, while others are of lesser power. The crowd is crushing and it's difficult to estimate how many have gathered to challenge me, no more than two hundred.

Forge is at the helm and they arrive into gestalt almost immediately, letting him serve as their hand. The rest seem lifeless, hovering less than a foot from the ground; they easily match and exceed the power of the Phoenix.

I pick them off one by one, their individual defeats are small pleasures, I crush their centers; the pain for them individually is nothing in comparison to what Jean felt. Human beings simply do not have the capacity for such pain.

Forge is last and I hesitate, while longtime friends Illyana and Stephen Strange lay with a mirrored margin of Jeans residual pain. There's something to his rugged, tattered handsomeness, something beyond just physique; he's beautiful and it humbles me that I know he genuinely feels the same way about me.

It's crippling, the longing for him, it smothers me and I realize that there isn't a such thing as rational adult love; it's crazy and limitless.

Salty tears burn my eyes, the realization that there is some truth to what Kitty said, that I don't ask for help. I have become an escapist hiding behind the façade of the unreachable goddess, putting myself above my peers and burying myself under the debris of my responsibilities to the X-men.

It is as easy as it looks.

"I take it back. I take it back."

It isn't unlike watching a video tape in a VCR being rewound, and her memories are being erased in kind. She struggles to keep her knowledge of the acts she's destined to commit but they're wiped clean in reverse until all that she can remember is the time before she arrived in her village.

Ororo Munroe stands where she began this journey, in both time and place, with a tugging intuition that she should leave her village, grounded, and return to the X-men.

She takes two steps forward before turning, abandoning her heritage.


End file.
